Views with a room

Room with a view: Spain

HOTEL ARTS BARCELONA

Room 1601

From this 16th-floor deluxe sea-view room at the Hotel Arts
Barcelona, Frank Gehry's monumental fish sculpture, 56 metres long
and 35 metres high, appears to be leaping into the ocean,
especially when the sun hits the interwoven stainless-steel strips
that form its scales. Built right on the waterfront as part of the
Olympic Village constructed for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the
sculpture marked Gehry's first foray into computer-aided design.
The hotel's lush garden terraces lie in the shadow of the
sculpture; just out of shot to the left is the hotel's outdoor pool
and beyond that, the Port Olimpic. To the right is Barceloneta, one
of the city's most vibrant neighbourhoods, built in the 18th
century to rehouse those displaced by the building of a new
fortress (La Ciutadella, now a park) by King Philip V of Spain.
Barceloneta also has one of the best beaches in the city.